Rabbi to give invocation on Obama’s big day (2008)

The Jewish Daily Forward
August 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — Presidential historians and convention observers believe this year’s Democratic convention will be the first time that a rabbi gives an invocation before the presidential nominee’s acceptance speech since the advent of modern American political conventions nearly a century ago.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, will be making history on August 28 as he opens the Democratic convention’s last day, in front of an expected crowd of 70,000 in the audience and millions more watching from afar.

The choice of a Jewish religious leader to give the prime-time invocation is only one part of a move by the Democratic Party to raise the profile of faith in its rhetoric and activities, a move from which Jewish religious activists and evangelical Christians seem to be benefiting more than other faiths. Both groups are seen as key constituencies for the Democrats in the November elections.

“This shows how critical the party and the campaign believe the Jewish community is in the upcoming elections,” said Matt Dorf, Jewish outreach coordinator for the Democratic National Committee.

Saperstein, who was approached by convention organizers only two weeks before the scheduled invocation, said he does not see his role as a show of support for Senator Barack Obama or the Democrats, but rather as common tradition “so ingrained in American life that it cannot be perceived as a political endorsement.”

Advisers for the Obama campaign, as well as convention organizers, chose Saperstein, who for the past 34 years has led the Reform movement’s Washington political arm, after joint consultations. An official involved in the process said that Saperstein was picked because he is widely respected by members of all faiths, thanks to years of activity in building advocacy coalitions on social issues as well as on foreign policy. Saperstein has been a leading force in the Save Darfur Coalition, which strives to raise public awareness of the genocide in Sudan. [One wonders how interested Saperstein is in raising public awareness about Israel’s ongoing genocide against the 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip -- 800]

But Saperstein, according to the official, was also favored because of his firm support for the separation of church and state. “If anyone was concerned the Democrats are going too far toward faith, then all the rabbis featured in the convention are very strong on church-state separation,” the official said, referring to Saperstein and six other rabbis who will attend formal events at the convention.

Not all are convinced. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which advocates strict limits on the role of religion in the public arena, called the decision to feature religious leaders in political conventions a mistake. “It seems that this year, both parties will try to prove they are holier than the other,” he said, which in his view is no more than a form of pandering.

Naturally, faith leaders participating in the convention reject that argument. Among them is Rabbi Steve Gutow, head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

“One of my principal goals is to help Jews engage in faith in the context of their activism,” said Gutow, a Reconstructionist who will participate in the convention’s panel on “Getting out the Faith Vote.”

Saperstein’s big moment will take place at Denver’s Invesco Field and, after Obama’s acceptance speech, will be followed by a benediction by Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor from Northland, a church in Florida.

The creation of a “faith caucus” and a variety of planned events featuring religious leaders will bring to the Denver convention a record number of rabbis. In addition to Saperstein and Gutow, the convention will feature Orthodox rabbis Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, and Marc Schneier; Reform rabbis Amy Schwartzman from Virginia and Steve Foster of Denver, and Jack Moline, a Conservative rabbi.

In an attempt to respect sensitivities of Orthodox participants, who do not support mixed prayer, organizers made an effort to define the interfaith meetings as “gatherings” rather than services.

The Republicans have yet to announce their plans for including faith groups at their convention, which will open in St. Paul, Minn., a week after the Democrats’. An initial agenda released on August 20, however, reveals that at least three Jewish politicians will speak at the convention: Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle and Independent Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman.

The above article can be found at: Rabbi To Give Invocation on Obama’s Big Day

Texe Marrs: Do The Jews Own Hollywood And The Media?

powerofprophecy.com
May 9, 2009

Do the Zionist Jews own Hollywood and the media? Are they using the media to mold and shape American opinion by constantly injecting Zionist propaganda and bias into news programs, movies, television shows, even children’s cartoons and entertainment?

The answer is so blatantly “Yes!” that you wouldn’t think these questions are even worth pursuing. But recently, the untoward comments of a patriot talk show host made me stop and rethink it. Are there people out there-even in the Patriot Movement-who really are that much in the dark, who deny Jewish influence in the media?

Recently, when a caller to a talk show on the Genesis Radio Network suggested that the Jews control the media, the host went wild. He raged on and on, playing the race card. He branded the surprised caller and others like him who are weary of Zionist influence “Nazis” and “anti-Semites.” Angrily, he denied Jewish involvement in any conspiracies and ridiculed those who had the audacity to suggest that Jews run Hollywood or the media. Then, in a real fit of spewed venom, the talk show host demanded that the caller and all others who believe like him should go out and hang themselves to promote population reduction.

As if that wasn’t hateful enough, the pro-Zionist host then stated that all the “Nazis and Anti-Semites” who opposed Zionism and the Jews should plug in an electric toaster, hold it to their naked bodies, jump into a bathtub filled with water, and have a party.” In other words, kill themselves.

Quite a rampage by the supposedly “patriot” talk show host. And all because the poor caller had dared to propose undue Jewish influence over the media.

Hearing the actual taped broadcast of this unbelievable tirade by a pro-Zionist advocate confirmed my resolve to inform good folks once again of the truly dictatorial grip that Zionist Jews have on the media. The best way to do this is not to rage and spew venom, but simply to present the facts, to document the truth of Jewish control of the media.
What Do Knowledgeable Jews Say?

How about going to top Jews in the media themselves and see what they say? Take Joel Stein, for example, columnist for the Los Angeles Times newspaper and regular contributor to Time magazine. In his column in the LA Times (Dec. 19, 2008), Stein says that Americans who think the Jews do not control Hollywood and the media are just plain “dumb.”

“Jews totally run Hollywood.” Stein proudly admits. He then goes on to provide a long, long list of Hollywood/media chieftains-all Jews!-to prove his point. On his list: Fox News President Peter Chernin; Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey; Walt Disney CEO Robert Igor; Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton; Warner Brothers Chairman Barry Meyer; CBS CEO Leslie Moonves; MGM Chairman Harry Sloan; and NBC/Universal Studios CEO Jeff Zucker.

That’s just the top brass at the studios. Then there are the actors and entertainers-predominantly Jews, from Barbara Streisand and Gwyneth Paltrow to Tom Hanks and Ben Afleck. JewJewand Jew again. As Stein wryly remarks, even the head of the Actors’ Union, the Screen Actors Guild, Alan Rosenberg, is a Jew.

“The Jews are so dominant,” writes Stein, “I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies.” “But lo and behold,” Stein says, “even one of that six, AMC President Charles Collier, turned out to be a Jew!”

“As a proud Jew,” says Joel Stein, “I want America to know of our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood.”

ADL’s Foxman Admits Jewish Control

Stein says he then called Abe Foxman, Chairman of the Jewish ADL, to ask him, why don’t more Jews just come out and boast at this great accomplishment? Foxman responded by admitting that yes, it’s true that most of the top execs “happen to be Jewish.” In fact, Foxman told Stein, “all eight major film studios are run by men who happen to be Jewish.”

Ben Stein (no relation to Joel), the well-known Jewish actor, economic commentator and writer, when asked “Do Jews run Hollywood?” stared blankly at the questioner, then retorted, “You bet they do-and what of it?” Shahar Ilan, writing in haaretz.com, the internet division of Israel’s top daily newspaper, commented, “The Jews do control the American media. This is very clear, and claiming otherwise is an insult to common knowledge.”

Neal Gabler, also a Jew and a noted media researcher, wrote an entire book outlining Jewish control of Hollywood. It was entitled, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. But to really see how the Jews, in their own publications and press, view the reality of Jewish control of the media, all one has to do is take a look at a recent issue of the Jewish Daily Forward, which featured an article entitled, “Billionaire Boychiks Battle for Media Empire.”

Billionaire Jews Battle for Media

This fascinating, look-see article discussed how the Jews had for decades owned the media and now were competing; that is, vying, to buy one of America’s most powerful media companies, Tribune Company, which owns 23 television stations, a baseball team, and many major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

“However, it turns out,” gloated the Jewish mag, “we’ll have a Jew in charge of the (LA) Times, which was once one of old Los Angeles’ most famous WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) institutions. What a great day for old LA Jews”

The publication noted that among the Jewish billionaires (“boychiks”) vying for the Tribune media empire is “Liberal, Jewish, media mogul David Geffen.”

And who, pray tell, is the current owner of the Tribune Company? Why, that would be Jewish billionaire Sam Zell. Zell is a major donor to Israeli, Zionist and Jewish causes. His own rabbi proudly reports that Zell is “a committed Zionist, a generous supporter of Israel, and a member in good standing of the synagogue.”

Asked who his own favorite newspaper columnists were, Zell quickly answered, “Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman, and David Brooks.” Surprise! The trio are all ardent Zionist whack-jobs who clamor over each other demanding the U.S. attack Iran, provide billions more in foreign aid to favored nation Israel, and so forth.

Local Newspapers Owned by Foreign Agents

So powerful is the Jewish control over the media that Nathanael Kapner, a rare Jew who converted to Christianity and now is adept at reporting these things, asserts that no longer can we trust our local daily newspaper. “Zionist Jews have taken over the ‘local newspaper’ in America,” Kapner writes. Indeed he explains that there basically is no local newspaper anymore, because, “Most local newspapers are owned by companies controlled by Zionists whose offices are hundreds of miles away.”

Kapner provides manifold evidence of Zionists’ dominating control of the media at all levels. The Newhouse Empire of the Jewish brothers Samuel, Donald, and Theodore Newhouse, Kapner says, “illustrates the insatiable appetite for opinion control:”

“Today, the Newhouse Empire owns 40 local newspapers across the U.S.A. These include the Newark Star Ledger, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Portland Oregonian, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.”

Then, there are the vast array of magazines run by the Jewish Newhouse family-including the New Yorker, Vogue, Golf Digest, Glamour, Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), and the massively circulated newspaper insert, Parade magazine.

Jewish Media Spew Out Pro-Zionist Propaganda

The fact that Zionists control virtually every media outlet in America is no doubt why the American citizenry hears only one version of events in the Middle East-the pro-Jew, pro-Israeli side. This led Dr. Kevin MacDonald, professor at California State University, to write:

“In the contemporary world, organized American Jewish lobbying groups and deeply committed Jews in the media are behind the pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy that is leading to war against virtually the entire Arab world.”

This Zionist bias and propaganda spin by the Jewish-owned American media is not new. As far back as 1978, the noted Jewish political writer Alfred Lillienthal, in his revealing book, The Zionist Connection, stated:

“The most effective component of Jewish connection is probably that of media control. It is well known that American opinion molders have long been largely influenced by a handful of powerful newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the St. Louis-Post Dispatch (All Jewish Families).”

To further illustrate the breadth of Jewish media control, we note that Jewish magnate Arthur Sulzberger’s media empire today includes not only the New York Times (which, in Stalin’s day, systematically covered up the genocidal crimes of Jewish commissars in Communist U.S.S.R), but also the Boston Globe, the Lexington Dispatch (NC), the Gainesville Sun (FL), the Ocala Star Banner (FL), the Tuscaloosa News (AL), the Spartansburg Herald Journal (SC), and the Santa Barbara News Press (CA). Each of the newspapers Lillienthal mentioned back in 1978, in turn, owned and still owns dozens of others. So tainted is the news because of this that almost every newspaper in America endorsed President George Bush’s radically pro-Israel policies in the Middle East, including Israel’s savage butchery of Lebanon and Palestine.

There can be no doubt. It is easy for us to document the massive dominance over the media by evil Jewish shills who are continually hostile to pure American interests while, everyday, unabashedly spewing out reams of misleading Zionist propaganda. Time magazine, Newsweek, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX-and many, many more are all owned or run by Jews and operated solely to further the aims of the traitorous, anti-American, ever-growing Zionist World Empire.

All America is in the Grip of the Hidden, Red Iron Fist of Zionism

Of course, the media, even as important as it is to our culture, is only a bit piece of the whole that is now, regrettably, under the big thumbs of the Jewish Zionist elite. Our educational establishment, Wall Street, the banks, the Federal Reserve, our Congress, the White House (just consider Rahm Emanuel, the Zionist Israeli freak who is Obama’s White House Chief of Staff), and our judiciary-each and every one is infiltrated by Zionist radicals who put Israel and their own “Chosen People” first, to the detriment of everything sacred to honest, God-fearing, hard-working Americans.

So, the next time you hear some ignorant rube on talk radio or elsewhere shoving the race card in your face and ranting and raving about “Nazis” and “anti-Semites” who “claim” the Jews control the media, why don’t you just reach out and turn that radio dial to another place. And please, don’t forget to also let the radio network and station manager know of your displeasure.

The fact is that the dishonest Zionist shills out there promoting Zionist lies, drivel, and nonsense truly deserve our contempt.

The Truth is Precious

As for Texe Marrs and Power of Prophecy, we have long pledged ourselves to telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And part of that truth, simply put, is this: That yes, absolutely, Zionist Jews do own and control Hollywood and the media. So beware of their lies and deceit. The truth is precious. Let us work together to protect and nurture it.

(Texe Marrs, Author and Researcher may be contacted at www.powerofprophecy.com)

The above article can be found at: http://www.rense.com/general85/ownh.htm

Six more Israeli ’spies’ caught in Lebanon

PressTV
May 4, 2009

Lebanese authorities have arrested six more people accused of spying for Tel Aviv amid a campaign aimed at curtailing Israel’s intelligence operations in Lebanon.

The latest captures take to 16 the number of suspected Israeli spies arrested since January, an army spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The arrests include a police officer and his wife who were taken into custody late Sunday. Three others, accused of passing on information to Israel, were detained also on Sunday in the southern the village of Habboush.

The report comes as Lebanese authorities have stepped up efforts to identify and capture those collecting intelligence on Lebanon on behalf of Israel.

In late April, two Lebanese men and a Palestinian confessed to supplying Israeli intelligence agents with information regarding Hezbollah activities.

The men, with alleged links to Israel’s intelligence service Mossad, were exposed during an interrogation of a retired Lebanese general also suspected of spying on behalf of Israel, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported.

The former Lebanese general told interrogators that he had worked for Israel for more than 10 years and regularly met with his Israeli contacts in Europe.

Lebanon, which considers itself at war with Israel, bans its citizens from having any contact with Tel Aviv. Under Lebanese law, death penalty awaits one who is convicted of espionage.

The above article can be found at: Six more Israeli ’spies’ caught in Lebanon

DUAL-LOYALTY WATCH: U.S. to drop spy case against pro-Israel lobbyists

The New York Times
May 1, 2009

WASHINGTON — A case that began four years ago with the tantalizing and volatile premise that officials of a major pro-Israel lobbying organization were illegally trafficking in sensitive national security information collapsed on Friday as prosecutors asked that all charges be withdrawn.

From the beginning, the case against the lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) was highly unusual. The two, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, accused of improperly providing to their colleagues, journalists and Israeli diplomats sensitive information they had acquired by speaking with American policy makers.

Some lawyers at the Justice Department had always had significant reservations about the case, some current and former officials said. They believed that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman had acted imprudently, but doubted that either man should be criminally prosecuted. Nevertheless, FBI agents poured substantial resources into the case, and the decision to seek a dismissal infuriated many within the law enforcement agency.

But several current and former officials said the decision to abandon the case was no surprise. With adverse judicial rulings making the prosecution increasingly risky, lawyers in the United States Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Va., and at Justice Department headquarters met on several occasions in recent weeks, agonizing over whether to go forward with the trial, which was scheduled to begin June 2.

Last week, officials from the FBI’s Washington office who investigated the case made their final pleas to keep the case alive, arguing that there was enough evidence to persuade a jury to find the two men guilty. But prosecutors — including some who had worked on the case for years — disagreed.

Joseph Persichini Jr., the top official at the FBI’s Washington office, praised the work of the FBI agents on the case, and said he was “disappointed” in the decision to drop the charges.

The case had raised delicate political issues about the role played by American Jewish supporters of Israel and their close, behind-the-scenes relationships with top government officials. Advocates of civil liberties and of open government asserted that the defendants were being singled out for activities that were part of the accepted and routine way that American policy on Israel and the Middle East had been formulated for years, with people exchanging information.

The decision to drop the case comes just days before Aipac is scheduled to begin its annual policy conference in Washington, which has often served as an advertisement of its influence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to address the event via satellite.

Lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman said in a statement that while they were pleased at the decision, the government had erred in bringing the case in the first place and had caused great damage to their clients. Aipac dismissed the men early in 2004 after prosecutors presented some of their evidence to an Aipac lawyer. The group later agreed to subsidize their legal costs.

The Justice Department said that the decision to drop the case had been made solely by career prosecutors in Alexandria, and that senior officials of the Obama administration had acted only to approve the recommendation.

Several other officials said, however, that while senior political appointees at the Justice Department did not direct subordinates to drop the case, they were heavily involved in the deliberations. These officials said David S. Kris, the newly appointed chief of the department’s national security division, and Dana J. Boente, the interim United States attorney in Alexandria, had conferred regularly with prosecutors and ultimately decided to accept the recommendation to abandon the case. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was informed and raised no objections.

The case would have been the first prosecution under the espionage law in which no documents were involved and in which the defendants were not officials who provided the information, but the private citizens who received it from them in conversations.

While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman trafficked in facts, ideas and rumor, they had done so with the full awareness of officials in the United States and Israel, who found they often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making between two close, but sometimes quarrelsome, friends. [Notice how the NYT, a well-known Zionist mouthpiece, shamelessly editorializes here in defense of the two spies -- 800]

The move by the government to end the case came in a motion filed with the Federal Court in Alexandria.

In pretrial maneuvering, the prosecution suffered several setbacks in rulings from the trial judge, T. S. Ellis III, that were upheld by a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. Judge Ellis rejected several government efforts to conceal classified information if the case went to trial. Moreover, he ruled that the government could prevail only if it met a high standard; he said prosecutors would have to demonstrate that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew that their distribution of the information would harm United States national security.

The investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman also surfaced recently in news reports that Representative Jane Harman, a [Jewish] California Democrat long involved in intelligence matters, was overheard on a government wiretap discussing the case. As reported by Congressional Quarterly, which covers Capitol Hill, and The New York Times, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing with an Israeli intelligence operative to try to intercede with Bush administration officials to obtain leniency for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in exchange for help in persuading Democratic leaders to make her chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Ms. Harman has denied interceding for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, and has expressed anger that she was wiretapped. She is to be among the featured speakers at the Aipac conference next week.

Over government objections, Judge Ellis had also ruled that the defense could call as witnesses several senior Bush administration foreign policy officials to demonstrate that what occurred was part of the continuing process of information trading and did not involve anything nefarious. The defense lawyers were planning to call as witnesses former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Stephen J. Hadley, the former national security adviser; and several others. Government policy makers indicated they were clearly uncomfortable with senior officials’ testifying in open court over policy deliberations.

The government’s motion to dismiss said the government was obliged to take a final review of the case to consider “the likelihood that classified information will be revealed at trial, any damage to the national security that might result from a disclosure of classified information and the likelihood the government would prevail at trial.”

The above article can be found at: U.S. to Drop Spy Case Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists

Israelis told to fight ‘holy war’ in Gaza

The Independent (UK)

March 21, 2009

Many Israeli troops had the sense of fighting a “religious war” against Gentiles during the 22-day offensive in Gaza, according to a soldier who has highlighted the martial role of military rabbis during the operation.

The
soldier testified that the “clear” message of literature distributed to
troops by the rabbinate was: “We are the Jewish people, we came to this
land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the Gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”

The claim comes in the detailed transcript of a post-war
discussion by soldiers, publication of which has triggered a military
police inquiry into allegations about the use of lethal firepower
against unarmed civilians.

The investigation was ordered by the military’s advocate
general Avichai Mandleblit on Thursday after the liberal daily
newspaper Haaretz published extracts from the transcript describing
incidents in which Palestinian civilians were killed and property
wantonly damaged.

In the fuller version of the transcript published yesterday, the soldier, a unit commander from the Givati brigade, says: “This
was the main message and the whole sense many soldiers had in this
operation was of a religious war.” He recalled that his own sergeant
was from a hesder yeshiva, a college combining religious study and
military service, who led the whole platoon in prayer before going into
battle. [Battle?! The Israelis deployed armored tank columns, backed by
jet fighters and helicopter gun-ships, against lightly-armed resistance
fighters. What happened in Gaza was more akin to a sacrifice, or
holocaust, than a "battle" -- 800]. The commander added that he had
sought to talk to the men about Palestinian politics and society and,
“about how not everyone in Gaza is Hamas and not every inhabitant wants
to vanquish us”.

After the offensive, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, called for the dismissal of the military’s head chaplain, Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, a brigadier general. It said that he had distributed to troops a booklet saying that it was “terribly immoral” to show mercy to a “cruel enemy” and that the soldiers were fighting “murderers”.

The longer transcript conveys a fuller sense of the debate
involving graduates from the Yitzhak Rabin military preparatory course.
At one point Danny Zamir, the head of the course, says he would have
questioned the killing of 180 traffic policemen during bombing on the
first day of the operation. One pilot replies: “Tactically speaking you
call them police. In any case they are armed and belong to Hamas …
during better times they take Fatah people and throw them off the roofs
and see what happens.”

The latest casualty figures published by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights list the names of 1,434 dead of whom they say 926 were civilians, 236 fighters and 255 police officers.

The above article can be found at: Israelis told to fight ‘holy war’ in Gaza

Lieberman: U.S. will accept any Israeli policy decision

Haaretz (Israel)
April 29, 2009

The Obama Administration will put forth new peace initiatives only if Israel wants it to, said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in his first comprehensive interview on foreign policy since taking office.

“Believe me, America accepts all our decisions,” Lieberman told the Russian daily Moskovskiy Komosolets.

Lieberman granted his first major interview to Alexander Rosensaft, the Israel correspondent of one of the oldest Russian dailies, not to an Israeli newspaper. The role of Israel is to “bring the U.S. and Russia closer,” he declared.

During the interview, Lieberman said Iran is not Israel’s biggest strategic threat; rather, Afghanistan and Pakistan are.

This comes after years of Lieberman warning about the growing Iranian threat. Now, he has dropped Tehran to number two, with Iraq coming third.

Lieberman also discussed Moscow’s under-utilized role in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and said he aims to correct this. The newspaper emphasized Lieberman’s intention to develop closer ties with Russia and to resolve international issues jointly.

“Russia has a special influence in the Muslim world, and I consider it a strategic partner that should play a key role in the Middle East,” Lieberman said in the interview.

“I have argued for some time that Israel has insufficient appreciation for the ‘Kremlin factor’; I intend to mend this gap,” he said.

Political sources in the Commonwealth of Independent States have told Haaretz that they believe Lieberman’s appointment will result in “greater understanding” between Israel and Russia.

Regarding his changing view on Israel’s greatest threats, Lieberman said that since he began warning against the nuclear threat from Iran, nuclear threats have become more prevalent. Meanwhile, a more urgent problem has developed in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Pakistan is nuclear and unstable, and Afghanistan is faced with a potential Taliban takeover, and the combination form a contiguous area of radicalism ruled in the spirit of Bin Laden,” Lieberman said.

“I do not think that this makes anyone in China, Russia or the U.S. happy… these countries [Pakistan and Afghanistan] are a threat not only to Israel, but to the global order as a whole.”

In response to a question on Israel’s role in countering these threats, Lieberman said, “Our role is that we should bring the U.S. and Russia closer … it is unclear to me why the U.S. needs to confront Russia on Kosovo or Ukraine’s entry to NATO; however, Russia needs to understand that close cooperation with Hugo Chavez does not build western confidence.”

Later in the interview, the foreign minister spoke unkindly of the road map, which he called binding, unlike the Annapolis process, in his view. The Palestinians “are not very familiar with the document,” he said. Lieberman called a two-state solution a nice slogan that lacks substance.

On Tuesday, Army Radio reported that Lieberman ruled out an Arab peace initiative, after previously announcing that Israel was not bound to the U.S.-backed Annapolis process.

“This is a dangerous proposal, a recipe for the destruction of Israel,” he was quoted as telling a closed meeting of senior Foreign Ministry officials.

Meanwhile, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was due in Israel on Wednesday for talks with senior officials, but as of Tuesday night, there were no plans for a meeting with Lieberman.

A senior political source in Jerusalem said Tuesday night that a meeting would take place, but neither the Foreign Ministry nor officials in Cairo would comment on the matter.

Suleiman was scheduled to meet with President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai.

This will be the first exchange between the new Israeli administration and Egypt. The senior Egyptian official will discuss the security situation along the Gaza border, the Hezbollah terror ring uncovered in Egypt, and arms smuggling through Sinai.

Another central issue in the talks will be the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, and Israel’s position on the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Lieberman sparked outrage in Egypt last year when he criticized its president, Hosni Mubarak, in a speech before the Knesset, saying that the Egyptian leader could “go to hell.”

His remarks were over Mubarak’s refusal to make an official state visit to Israel. The Egyptian leader’s sole trip to Israel was for the 1995 funeral of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

At another time, Lieberman said Egypt’s Aswan Dam should be bombed.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said earlier this month that Lieberman would not be welcome in Egypt unless he changes his positions.

“If I meet him I will keep my hands to myself,” Aboul Gheit told a television reporter in Cairo, declaring that he would refuse to shake the hand of Israel’s foreign minister.

There is a power struggle over Israel within Egypt, between the General Intelligence Service and the Foreign Ministry. The former manages the Israel “file,” while the Foreign Ministry officially represents Cairo vis-à-vis Israel. If Suleiman and Lieberman do meet, it will be another factor within this power struggle.

The above article can be found at: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1080097.html

Lieberman: U.S. will accept any Israeli policy decision

Rabbis go public with Talmudic Jesus hatred

Do Jews Have a Jesus Problem?
The Jewish Daily Forward
April 29, 2009

The joke, if that’s what it is, goes like this: “You’ll have to forgive us Jews for being a little nervous. Two thousand years of Christian love have worn down our nerves.”

That says it all, doesn’t it? The scars of anti-Semitism and missionary activity, the pathos-drenched sense of humor, the contempt for Christianity — this is certainly how I regarded our local majority religion as I was growing up. When I was a child, Christianity was like the big, stupid bully: at once idiotic, and overwhelmingly powerful. Couldn’t they see how ridiculous their religion was? A virgin birth? Santa Claus? An Easter Bunny? A messiah who got killed, but actually died for our sins?

And yet, these were the people running our country, telling us which days we get off from school and which we don’t, and playing their insidious music every winter.

If the books the Forward receives for review are any indication, I am not alone in my neurosis about Yeshu ben Yoseph. Though nothing, it seems, will match the never-ending torrent of books about the Holocaust, these past few years have seen a small mountain of Jesus books arrive on my desk, most of them not worthy of review. Screeds about how Jesus got Judaism wrong, or how Christians got Jesus wrong, or how much better we are than they are — these are books my younger self would have written.

Surely, some of the Jesus fad is due to the success of David Klinghoffer’s 2005 book, “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus.” (Answer: We’re the chosen people — a nation, not universalists.) But I think a lot of it is also due to our increased confidence as an assimilated minority in the United States. Where once we could have been tortured or burned for not accepting Christ, now we can publish books criticizing him.

It was not always thus. Indeed, the texts discussed in the best book of the recent crop, Peter Schafer’s “Jesus in the Talmud,” were once considered so outrageous that they were self-censored from European editions of the Talmud. Not that the attempt succeeded: Christian authorities burned the Talmud anyway, and antisemitism continued unabated. But the censorship did succeed somewhat; these texts are practically unknown even today.

And they are still somewhat scandalous. What Schafer shows is that the rabbis of the Talmud knew the New Testament well enough to parody it and were concerned enough about the growth of the Jewish-Christian sect to condemn the testament. And they did so in unsparing terms.

The image of Jesus that one gets from the Talmud is that of an illicit, sex-crazed black magician who uses trickery to lead Israel astray. In BT Sanhedrin 103a, Jesus is depicted as a poor disciple who “spoiled his food,” which Schafer speculates may be a euphemism for sexual misconduct: “to eat the dish” being a recognized Talmudic euphemism known for the sex act itself. A later emendation adds that he “practiced magic and led Israel astray.” And the virgin birth is ridiculed as a cover-up of Jesus’ true parentage: His mother was an “illicit woman” (another Talmudic locution), perhaps even a prostitute.

Strong stuff — no wonder they don’t teach it in Sunday school. But fascinating, as well, as long as, of course, we don’t take it too seriously (which, doubtless, some Jews do). The texts Schafer adduces — all of them relatively late, dating to the third- or fourth-century C.E., suggesting a conscious effort to fight the upstart sect — show that the Talmudic rabbis did not reject Jesus for the noble reasons that Klinghoffer and his ilk suggest. At least according to these texts, they rejected him because they thought he was evil, or saw him as a threat.

The most notorious of all the “Jesus texts,” however, is BT Sanhedrin 43a, which describes the halachic procedure of Jesus’ trial and execution. This is notorious, of course, because for nearly 2,000 years, Christian authorities have been blaming the Jews for killing Jesus, even though the New Testament itself makes clear that it’s the Romans who actually did the deed. [This is, of course, false. The New Testament makes the Jews’ responsibility for Jesus’ death, and Pilate’s concomitant desire to avoid it, abundantly clear -- 800]

Shockingly, however, the Talmud does not shirk responsibility for Jesus’ death. On the contrary, it says that he deserved it and that the Jews did it themselves. Jesus was, the text relates, a sorcerer, an idolater and a heretic who led Israel to idolatry. His conviction was entirely just, and his execution — stoning and then hanging — was carried out in strict accordance with rabbinic law.

Why would the Talmud make such a claim? Schafer speculates it is to undermine the Gospels’ account and empower the rabbis. In the Gospels’ account, the rabbis are tools, almost, of Rome. In the Talmud’s account, they are powerful — so powerful that they condemned the hero of the Christian sect to his brutal death. (Believe it or not, there are actually even more graphic texts, which Schafer includes in his book. Suffice to say, their gruesome account of hell puts even Dante to shame. But I’ll leave that out of this family newspaper.)

What’s fascinating about reading these texts together with Schafer’s careful and thorough commentary is that the ambivalence about Jesus, which I experienced as a young man, seems to be already in place back in the fourth century. On the one hand, Jesus is beneath contempt. On the other, he is dangerously powerful. These texts were written before the church became the most powerful force on Earth, but they wouldn’t be out of place among the books I chose not to include here.

Indeed, I’m sure that there are some readers who may have preferred these comments not be published at all. The texts in Schafer’s book are still dangerous. They still might incite violence against Jews. And they threaten decades of progress in Jewish-Christian relations.

One wonders when, if ever, we Jews will be able to heal from the trauma of Christian oppression [!!!] and actually learn from, while still differentiating ourselves from, Christian teaching and tradition. Along my own spiritual path, I’ve been amazed at how much I learn from the teachings of other traditions — Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Sufism — yet how jittery I get when it comes to Christianity. Yes, like many Jews, I have an appreciation for the teachings of Jesus, and I even wrote my master’s thesis on Paul and the Talmud. But this isn’t enough. I want to understand Christ the way Christians do — not to become one of them, but in order to enrich my own religious life. I want to learn from them how to have a personal relationship with a personal, humanized, embodied God who cares, and who saves. I want to experience Jesus as a human being enlightened enough to see everyone as holy, even the impure, the leprous and the marginalized. And I want to follow his example, seeing all my fellow human beings and myself as sons and daughters of God.

Four years ago, I developed some of these thoughts in an essay in Zeek magazine. I playfully titled the piece “How I Finally Came to Accept Christ in My Heart,” explaining the irony in the first paragraph. At a conference where the magazines were for sale, someone saw that title, took the entire stack of magazines and threw it on the floor, proceeding to scream at the bookseller for selling missionary trash.

Well, I guess you’ll have to forgive us Jews for still being a little nervous…

The above article can be found at: Do Jews Have a Jesus Problem?

Rabbis go public with Talmudic Jesus hatred

Obama pledges to confront Holocaust deniers

AFP
April 23, 2009

WASHINGTON — At a ceremony Thursday remembering millions of Jews [allegedly] slaughtered in World War II, President Barack Obama reaffirmed the strong US bond with Israel and vowed to confront Holocaust deniers.

“There are those who insist the Holocaust never happened, who perpetrate every form of intolerance — racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and more,” Obama told a gathering in the Capitol Rotunda organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“We have an opportunity and an obligation to confront these scourges,” Obama said.

[Thanks to DBS at The French Connection for this one]

“We have the opportunity … to commit ourselves to resisting injustice, intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take, whether confronting those who tell lies about history or doing everything we can to prevent and end atrocities like those that took place in Rwanda, those taking place in Darfur,” he said.

The US president’s speech came just days after a UN conference on racism where Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced Israel as “the most cruel and repressive racist regime.”

Obama reaffirmed the “strong and enduring” bonds between the United States and Israel.

“The nation of Israel rising from the destruction of the Holocaust” was a source of hope to all those who commit to fighting intolerance, he said.

Among those at the gathering, which was part of the US Holocaust Museum’s Days of Remembrance, were five Poles who between them [allegedly] saved the lives of scores of Jews and have been awarded the title of Righteous among the Nations by the Holocaust remembrance organization, Yad Vashem.

“The Righteous remind us that no one is born a savior or a murderer. These are choices we each have the power to make,” Obama said of the Poles as well as the villagers of Le Chambon in France, which [allegedly] refused to turn away or turn in Jews during the war, and saved 5,000 lives.

Jozef Wolszczak, now 90, and the doyen of the group of Righteous, [allegedly] saved the lives of 53 Jews in occupied Poland during the war, [allegedly] buying 20 of them for a kilo of gold from the Germans after an [alleged] raid, [allegedly] giving 30 jobs in his small factory and harboring three more in his home.

Tadeusz Stankiewicz’s family [allegedly] built bunkers in the woods southeast of Warsaw, in which 60 Jews hid.

“We did it because it was the only thing to do. How can you watch so many people suffering and not lift a finger to help them?” Stankiewicz told AFP.

Ireneusz Rajchowski’s family [allegedly] sheltered dozens of Jews in their home, including a man they [allegedly] helped smuggle out of the Warsaw ghetto.

The rescued Jewish man and his family survived the war. His daughter, Barbara Gora, was in the Capitol Thursday, along with two more Righteous Poles, Alicja Schnepf and Anna Stupnicka-Bando, and Krystyna Budnicka, [allegedly] the only member of her Orthodox Jewish family to survive the war.

“The Righteous teach us… that if we have the courage to heed that ’still, small voice’ within us, we can form a minyan for righteousness that can span a village and even a nation,” said Obama.

A minyan is the quorum required for Jewish communal worship. More than 6,000 Poles have been awarded the title of Righteous among the Nations, the largest number of any country.

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who [allegedly] survived the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, used his time at the podium in the Rotunda to take on Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian leader was “the number one Holocaust denier in the world,” said Wiesel, whose mother and sister [allegedly] died at Auschwitz, his father [allegedly] at Buchenwald.

“He used the solemn setting of a United Nations gathering again to insult the state of Israel in a way that no civilized person should ever do,” he said, thanking the United States for boycotting the UN meeting in Geneva.

The above article can be found at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090423/pl_afp/usiranwwiiholocaustjewshistorylead_20090423214851

Obama pledges to confront Holocaust deniers

Texe Marrs: The fix is in — Jews rule America

No one understands the machinations and motives of the Jewish criminal network currently controlling our national governments and media institutions quite like Christian author and radio host Texe Marrs.

“They constitute a secret government behind the government,” Marrs says in one of his 2008 radio shows, explaining how the elders of Zion have used two devices — force and “make-believe” — to cement their control over the world. Through these means, he points out, “they have now gained control of the organs of American government, as well as the governments of Britain and France, among others.”

To download this highly informative audio file — in which Marrs drives home “the absolute, incontrovertible fact that Jews rule America” — READ MORE.

You don’t have to be especially religious to appreciate the information presented by Marrs, who, thanks to decades of tireless research, is an authority on critical issues seldom if ever discussed in the mainstream. These include the “Judaization” of the Christian church in America; the proliferation of occultic (more specifically, cabalistic) ritual and symbolism in the government and media; and, perhaps most importantly, the Jewish conspiracy — now in its latter stages — to usher in a totalitarian “New World Order.”

In this radio show from early 2008 (when the Bush Jr. administration was still in the White House), Marrs asks how Israel can exert such tremendous influence over US policymaking — despite the relatively small number of Jews in the US. “Jews only constitute about 2 to 2.5 percent of the American population; out of 320 million people, only about 7.5 million are Jews,” he says. “So it isn’t voting power they have.”

He then explains how prophetic writers George Orwell and Alduous Huxley “taught us that propaganda and ‘make-believe’ could be even more effective than brute force.” Marrs continues: “In the very first of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the authors say — three times in a row — ‘Our countersign is force and make-believe.’ And that’s how they intend to take over the world.”

Marrs goes on to point out that over 70 percent of the members of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) — the influential “think-tank” that crafts US domestic and foreign policy — are Jews. “The CFR, which includes over 200 members of the George W. Bush administration, is a Zionist front,” he says, noting that CFR President Richard Haas, a Jew, was made a “special assistant” to Bush Sr. during the latter’s presidency.

Marrs also identifies numerous Zionist agents, whose primary allegiance is to the criminal state of Israel, within the Bush Jr. administration. These include Attorney-General Michael Mukasey, an orthodox Jew who advocates the use of torture and who was nominated for the post by Democratic New York Senator (and Jew) Charles Schumer; Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, a Jewish citizen of both Israel and the US; Special Envoy for Human Rights Jay Lefkowitz, also a Jew; Chief-of-Staff Josh Bolton, a Jew, who, according to Time Magazine, would open cabinet meetings with a reading from the Talmud; and Jewish IRS chief Douglas Shulman.

Marrs goes even further, pointing out that Jewish organizations are behind the proliferation of abortion and the promotion of homosexuality in America:

“You can’t name a single evangelical Christian organization that promotes homosexuality and abortion,” he says. “But I can cite numerous Jewish organizations that openly favor abortion and promote homosexuality: the American Jewish Committee; the American Jewish Congress; B’nai Brith; the Central Conference of American Rabbis; the Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations; Hadasa, the Jewish women’s group; the Jewish Labor Committee; the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods; the National Council of Jewish Women; the New Jewish Agenda; the Rabbinical Assembly; the Union of American Hebrew Congregations; and the United Synagogues of America.”

Finally, Marrs points to the line-up of would-be US presidential hopefuls — all of them ardent Zionists — as proof of the Jewish stranglehold over the American electoral system.

“You can see their power when you look at candidates for president right now,” he says. “Virtually all of them are Israel-firsters: Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, and even Barack Obama, who, in a recent speech to AIPAC, declared: ‘Our support for Israel will not be compromised if I’m elected president.’”

Download the entire Texe Marrs audio file HERE, give it a listen, then pass it along to every thinking person you know.

Texe Marrs: The fix is in — Jews rule America

A Cypto-jew and the Nazi underground movment “The Believer”

Ryan Gosling stars as Danny Balint, a Nazi youth whose influential way with words and speeches has earned him high regard amongst the underground movements in New York City. He has the ability to attract the right kind of attention to get where he wants to go; if Hitler had a reincarnation, this just might be it. But something else is troubling Danny, something rather unexpected: he himself happens to be of Jewish heritage. We see it not so much in words as we do in actions: during the breaking and entering into a synagogue by his neo-Nazi group, he is hesitant to destroy. When the time comes for him to prove himself by taking the life of a Jew, he backs down. Upon meeting Carla (Summer Phoenix), the daughter of a Fascist group leader (Theresa Russell), he does not try to dissuade her from learning the Hebrew language in order to read the Talmud.

somewhere near the end of the movie Danny is asked by his yeshiva childhood friends after stating their present occupations (Rabbi, Hebrew teacher, etc.) “What about you? What are you doing? Something strange, l bet. Uh,… No, it’s kind of an underground thing. Like an artist? No.Uh, like a private business.” indicating in my opinion that he was following the natural cores of his Talmudic teachings he received as a child. Even the scene opens with a Rabbi saying the line “The TaImud teaches us…”

download and watch here or here

2002
Filmcritic.com

Religious doubt leads to violence in this slice-of-lifer that won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival — now finally making tentative steps in general release.

Jewish self-hatred is an interesting foundation for a film, if only because it’s a subject never explored by an industry still apologizing for the Holocaust. The lengths to which someone will go to redefine and prove themselves a member of the enemy circle are certainly compelling. But when the main character in question dives between extremes without a single clear definition of his motives, the strength of the narrative suffers. A double life can only work when you are aware of some of the triggers that push some semblance of reality into the character in question.

Danny’s (Ryan Gosling) Jewish schooling has apparently left him with so many doubts, that the only cure for his intellectual suffering is the impenetrable wish to kill them all. Jews run and own everything anyway, so this will be a popular new sport to reset society, right? Finish what Hitler started!

Danny is encouraged along this bastardly streak by a Fascist circle he easily, miraculously even, finds on the Internet, headed by Curtis (Billy Zane, Titanic) and Lina (Theresa Russell, Black Widow). These two folks don’t have the passionate quality that Danny has when he speaks, even though they have the intellectual capacity to back themselves in a fight, which Danny can’t. With each prank Danny pulls, they edge him towards public speaking for fundraising, while their daughter Carla (Summer Phoenix) finds ways to uncover Danny’s Judaism and sleep with him.

Danny’s brutality is acceptable because that is how we first see him. His mindset is a little hard to swallow, because an intelligent 26-year old could definitely find better pursuits, even when approaching his internal boiling point. His struggle as he is received farther into the Nazi underworld is nicely portrayed with poignant undertones. Danny’s internal battle is compulsively watchable once these theorems are digested, like taking a geometry course.

The problem becomes why he all of the sudden feels an affinity for his previous life, seemingly just by looking at Torah scrolls. It’s one thing to fake missing a gunshot because actually killing another person takes more mental preparation than you bargained for. It’s another to begin vandalizing a synagogue, only to stop in the middle of it because the Torah has been uncovered. These quick changes of behavioral pattern are rampant throughout the film, and hurt the overall quality of pain Danny is experiencing.

And, unfortunately, due to stodgy, soap opera-ish dialogue, the rest of the cast comes across as stick figures reading lines from a TelePrompTer. For all of the assumptive commentary spoken by Danny’s elders and leaders, not one of them holds an emotional link to their words that makes them believable. Maybe this is supposed to complement Danny’s rapid mood swings, but instead leaves each scene boringly predictable in terms of interaction and outcome.

The Believer is a good idea at its base. If Danny’s journey between despising and affirming his background had been better plotted, it could even be used to discuss religious questioning with those institutions that are always complaining about the apathy of the young, no matter what the denomination.

The above article can be found at: The-Believer

Transcript of the mentioned excerpt above: The TaImud teaches us… – May we peeI oranges on Shabbos? – Yes, but… ..peeI them immediateIy. – If you see a… – Is it permitted… – (many voices overIap) – Danny? Danny? – (voices continue) – Danny! Hey! Stuart. Schoenbaum. Shlomo. – Shlomo. – Danny. God! God, it’s… it’s been years. – How you doin’? How are you doin’? – l’m doing great. l’m at the rabbinic program up at JTS. JTS. What about you? What are you doing? Something strange, l bet. Uh,… No, it’s kind of an underground thing. Like an artist? No. Uh, like a private business. Hey. You remember Miriam? Yeah. Hey. Hey. She’s at Yale Law now, interning for the District Attorney. We’re getting married next spring in Jerusalem. That’s great. Maybe Danny’d like to come to the minyan for Rosh Hashanah. That’s a great idea. We’re davening with a group from the seminary. Guess who comes? Avi! You two can go at it like you used to. Danny and Avi used to argue about everything. Talmud, Torah, politics,… – ..girls. Always ended in a fist-fight. – l remember. l always won. The arguments, anyway.

The Believer script-transcript

download and watch here or here

A Cypto-jew and the Nazi underground movment “The Believer”